Blog Post Archive

The latest Smithsonian Institution and United States Geological Survey Weekly Volcanic Activity Report has been published by the Global Volcanism Program, covering the week 14-20 March 2012. The report is compiled by Sally Kuhn Sennert. Show More Summary

The latest Smithsonian Institution and United States Geological Survey Weekly Volcanic Activity Report has been published by the Global Volcanism Program, covering the week 28 March to 3 April 2012. The report is compiled by Sally Kuhn Sennert. Among the highlights of this week: Alert level at Clevelandraised as a new lava dome becomes evident [...]

Never post in a hurry: not with WordPress, anyway, which on (rare) occasions will take a post you think you have just published and treat it as a draft, so that it never actually appears. That’s what happened to my holiday announcement on 18 March, which said that I would be away for two weeks. [...]

The BBC likes to do big-budget live TV specials from time to time: they are of course very expensive and complicated, so the corporation has to choose its favoured subjects very carefully. Recently we’ve had natural history (Springwatch), astronomy (Stargazing), little baby lambs (Lambing Live). The next big subject is a really big one: volcanoes. [...]

The latest Smithsonian Institution and United States Geological Survey Weekly Volcanic Activity Report has been published by the Global Volcanism Program, covering the week 7-13 March 2012. The report is compiled by Sally Kuhn Sennert. Some of the news from a week that has seen quite a lot of new activity: An explosive eruption at [...]

Cleveland volcano in the Aleutians had another small eruption on the afternoon of 13 March, reports the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the third such event in a week (the previous eruptions were on 7 March and 10 March). The AVO status report, issued on 14 March at 1134 local time (1934Z) describes what happened: Yesterday afternoon at [...]

A complete chain of active volcanoes exists along the whole line of the Aleutian islands, and serves to connect the volcanoes of Kamtschatka and Cook’s Inlet. Near the latter sea rises the Ilaman mountain, to a height of 12,066 feet (1,000 feet higher than Aetna), emitting fire and smoke incessantly, yet covered with perpetual snow [...]

Dr. Schmidt happened, with his colleagues, to be on the summit of Nea Kameni when a fearful thundering eruption of stones and ashes began, which lasted from two to three minutes. Leaving their instruments behind them they fled to the N.W., seeking as far as they could to shelter themselves from the shower of red-hot [...]

The almost unbelievable beauty and visual drama of the Greek island group known as Santorini in the southern Aegean Sea is the result of a complex geological history. Santorini is the site of several shield volcanoes which overlap and are cut by a number of calderas created by successive very large explosive eruptions (180,000 years [...]

VolcanoDiscovery reports that the alert level for Ijen volcano in eastern Java, Indonesia, has been raised to level 3, ‘alert’ (the second-highest level) because of an increase in activity. Ijen’s alert level was last raised to 3 in December 2011, but was lowered to 2 in February. Concern about increased seismicity and degassing led Indonesia’s [...]

Situated in the south of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four main islands making up the Japanese archipelago, Sakura-jima is one of the world’s most active volcanoes. The Global Volcanism Program records Sakura-jima’s current eruption as having begun in October 1955, so it has now been on the go continuously for more than half a [...]

It is a basic goal of volcanology to investigate what causes the change from an inactive or weakly active state to an active phase, as well as the accompanying phenomena, We can only deduce from observations and plausible arguments that over the long term, increased activity is a consequence of the rise of a batch [...]

Smoke was belching out continuously as if from a furnace and, where the surface of the mountain had been split by a long line of fires, under pressure from the winds inside (which on that day were raging quite violently), it also forced an exit for itself in many places; sometimes it even broke out [...]

The Alaska Volcano Observatory reports another small explosive event at Cleveland volcano, following the small explosion detected on 7 March. This one happened in the afternoon (local time) of 9 March, as the AVO Volcanic Activity Notification...Show More Summary

Increased seismic activity has been evident at Iliamna volcano in Alaska since late last year. The Alaska Volcano Observatory has been watching Iliamna closely, and has decided that the elevated activity is significant enough to merit an increase in the volcano’s alert level. The new status of Iliamna is Advisory/Yellow. The AVO volcanic activity notice reads [...]

The eruption under way at the Puyehue Cordón Caulle volcanic complex in Chile, which began in June 2011 and which caused large-scale evacuations and much disruption last year, may yet reach its first anniversary but appears to be waning. The NASA Earth Observatory has published images of the volcano captured in February and March 2012 [...]

Exciting news from the website of the wonderful Reaktion Books: this spring sees the launch of a new series under the title Earth, exploring the natural and cultural history of natural phenomena, and one of the first books to be published in this series is Volcano: Nature and Culture by James Hamilton. Author of books [...]

Beautiful, symmetrical Cleveland volcano in the Aleutians, which has been rumbling on and off over the last few months as its lava dome has grown, produced a small eruption last night, reports the Alaska Volcano Observatory: A small, short duration explosion was detected from Cleveland Volcano on distant seismic stations and infrasound arrays. The time [...]

As the scientists at the Kamchatka Volcano Emergency Response Team (KVERT) anticipated, Bezymianny has erupted. KVERT reported at 2226Z last night: Strong explosive eruption began about 21:27 UTC on March 08 – according to seismic data. Explosive eruption will continue and strong ash explosions up to 43,000 ft (13 km) a.s.l. possible at any time. [...]

It will perhaps at first sight be thought by some of your readers that an article on volcanoes has little to do with missionary work; and so it has, and I only entitle the contribution I am sending you ‘Tongariro Volcano’ because of the close connection that mountain has with the Maori superstition of ‘Tapu’. [...]